Hello Life!

by Marcus Butler

  LIFE HACK—SOME OF MY FAVORITE MEALS

  BREAKFAST

  MY CHOCOLATE OATMEAL

  I like to make this with oats, almond milk, raw cacao powder, almonds, raisins, with blueberries and raspberries on top.

  LUNCH

  POACHED EGGS WITH SPINACH

  On rye bread and almond butter, if you like that.

  ROASTED VEGETABLES WITH SMOKED PAPRIKA CHICKEN

  Best with root vegetables, like carrots, parsnips, and sweet potatoes.

  SWEET POTATO SALAD (VEGAN)

  Mixed vegetables (greens like broccoli, spinach, beans, etc.) with sliced roasted sweet potato and quinoa. Drizzled in extra-virgin olive oil.

  DINNER

  TUNA STEAK

  Tuna steak, with broccolini and a hint of lemon.

  Relationships can be a bit of a weird thing. One minute you’re happy, buzzing, in love. The next you’re dumped, crying into your pizza, and deleting pictures of your ex from Facebook. It feels like someone’s slapped you in the face. You can’t concentrate; you can’t get out of bed. It’s just about the worst feeling in the world.

  But the highs, when they come along, make it all worthwhile. I should know; I’ve had a few lows, but now I’m with my long-term girlfriend, Niomi, and all the bumps and moody relationships of the past seem insignificant, though they felt pretty big at the time.

  I guess Narcus (as some people call us online) first got started at school, probably in year six. We were both ten, and Niomi was the new girl in class. At that time I was a bit cheeky—I would often sit at the back of the class and make jokes about her. It was nothing horrible. I just enjoyed teasing Niomi and flirting, basically because when I first saw her my initial reaction was, “Wow, who’s she?”

  It probably wasn’t until year seven, when we were twelve, that we became friends, but for the first couple of years nothing really happened. Our sets in schools got mixed about and we were split up when I started getting into trouble. I had a bit of a bad phase and I’d been influenced by some of the more troublesome kids at school. I was cutting class and misbehaving. It was nothing major, but in an attempt to keep me on the straight and narrow, the teachers pulled me into a meeting at the end of the semester.

  “OK, Marcus, we think you’ve got real potential,” they said. “But you’re being influenced by the wrong people, so we’re going to move you into a class of new kids.”

  I wasn’t happy. Great, I thought. I’m leaving all my friends, and my classmates, and I’m being put into a group of new people who nobody knows? Great. That’s really going to help me out. This is so not cool.

  Niomi and me on our last day of school—age sixteen

  Starting a new year at school is normally exciting. You can’t wait to see the friends you left behind before the summer, and you’ve always got loads of stories to tell about what you’ve been up to during vacation. This time around, I was dreading it. I was going back to a new form in year eight, with a new form teacher and loads of people who were fresh from other schools. Some of those kids even knew each other from their previous classes, so they were going to have their own gangs and cliques. I really didn’t want to go back to school that year.

  I’d still see Niomi around, though, and school life changed with year ten and GCSEs. I chose my options and when it came to the first English lesson, Niomi walked into the room. She had been put in my set, and we ended up sitting next to each other. We’d talk every day and mess around. In the end, I started to get a bit of a crush on her.

  Looking back, I was a bit of a ladies’ man. I loved flirting and I’d started dating different girls at that time, so I probably thought I was great, a real player. Thinking about some of those moments in class—conversations with Niomi—makes me cringe now, though. I was desperately trying to impress her and I was probably making a real idiot of myself while doing it.

  But it wasn’t a one-way street; Niomi was flirting, too, and one evening at a friend’s party we ended up kissing. I was so happy. This is cool, I thought. She’s great! And after that, we started seeing each other, but, man, relationships in the classroom are weird.

  I should have been prepared for it because I’d been involved in one or two before meeting Niomi. The first happened in year seven with a girl who I won’t name, but we were madly in love and we stuck together for around a year, which felt like a long time back then. We genuinely thought we were going to be together forever, which seems funny now. We were so young. Why would we seriously believe that?

  Inevitably we broke up, which felt like the biggest thing in the world (though it wasn’t really), and after that there were one or two other girls. But then Niomi came along, though even that was strange at first because the one thing that happens when you start dating someone at school is that you both fall into the “dating code” trap.

  This goes in three phases:

  STAGE 1: “Seeing” one another

  STAGE 2: Going steady

  STAGE 3: Serious couple, aka “official”

  Wow, it can be stressful at times. And that’s before you even get to the day-to-day discussions about how you should behave in school. For example, do you hold hands at break? I know in my head I wanted to play it cool in front of my friends. I also wanted to play it cool in front of Niomi’s friends, and I guess, for that reason, the relationship never really progressed from the “seeing” phase to “official.” After kissing and hanging out for a bit, we became good friends. I saw other girls, she saw other boys, and it all fizzled out, and I think I was a little bit upset about it at the time. But that was all to change once the pair of us enrolled at college. . . .

  This is the first-ever photo of me and Niomi (which is why it’s such poor quality!)

  Niomi and I would always hang out together at college. She was in a relationship with some guy, and I was in and out of short romances, but nothing really serious. We’d still always meet up in free periods and after school, and I really liked her. I think she really liked me back then, too.

  BEWARE THE FRIEND ZONE!

  The Friend Zone is a really dangerous place to be when you’re attracted to someone. It’s also very easy to stumble into. Basically it’s that area where you flirt with someone you like so much, and hang out with them so often, that they become a friend, rather than a love interest. You like them, you don’t know whether they like you, and suddenly asking them out on a date seems super-weird because your relationship is platonic.

  Messing it up would also be really painful, so my advice is to stay out of the Friend Zone at all costs. Sure, when you like someone be nice to them. Be friendly and flirt. But make your move before you wander into the Friend Zone, because getting out of it is a bit of a challenge. And if you blow it, you’ve lost a friend as well as a potential partner. Ouch.

  I first realized I was in trouble when we all went out to a club in Brighton. We somehow managed to get in even though we were all seventeen, which seemed so exciting at the time. There were four of us—Niomi and me, my best friend, Max, and one of Niomi’s friends. I guess it felt a little double-dateish at the time, but it definitely wasn’t. Niomi had an “official” boyfriend at the time. But after a few drinks I started feeling all these emotions stirring up. I kept talking to her and thinking, Wow, I wish you were my girlfriend.

  Right there in the club, I remember saying, “I have feelings for you.” It all got a bit awkward and nothing happened until a few weeks later when we were chatting on Facebook Messenger. I really wanted to explain that I still had all these feelings for her, but I was struggling to find the courage to fess up. In the end I just typed it out, and in a pretty blunt way.

  MARCUS: I don’t think you should be with your boyfriend. . . .

  NIOMI: What do you mean?

  MARCUS: I think I really like you. I want to go out with you, like properly, because obviously we had our thing before. I want you to be my girlfriend.

  NIOMI: I’m in a relationship and I can’t leave him.

  MARC
US: . . .

  What a downer. Looking back, that really should have been that, but I knew she wasn’t happy with her guy, not really. To me, they just didn’t seem right as a couple, so when they split up a few months later, I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, I was delighted. Yes! I thought. Now we can do something!

  That moment arrived when we were both at a friend’s eighteenth birthday party. We danced. We flirted. We kissed. We haven’t looked back since. We made the transition from “seeing” one another to “official” like it was the easiest thing in the world, and five years later we’re still going strong.

  There have been plenty of bumps in the road for Niomi and me, and like all relationships we have to work at it. Moving your way up from “single” to “blissfully happy” is a tough road to negotiate, especially when you haven’t had that much experience. I learned from my own mistakes when it came to asking people out, likewise dating and then dumping people. I got to understand the hard way about issues such as dealing with heartbreak. And I’ve also picked up a few tips on how to make a relationship work. I’m going to walk you through all of those subjects in this section. Hopefully you’ll be able to make use of it.

  I’d like to think that I’ve got a bit of experience in this area. Just because I’m young, it doesn’t mean I don’t experience big feelings. All of us will go through love and loss in our young-adult lives, and the emotions and dilemmas are just as challenging for us in our teens and twenties as they are for an older person.

  I remember when Niomi and I first started as an “official” couple, there was some chat about how it was going to work once Niomi started studying at the University of the West of England. We’d already spent some time apart. I was working full time in Brighton, plus I’d been away for a few months backpacking around Australia with Max. When I got back, I’d often spend my weekends seeing her, but it was tough for a while. In my head, I was full of paranoia. Was Niomi going to meet someone cooler than me in the student union bar? Someone nicer than me? Someone better-looking? That fear was constantly going through my mind.

  We got through it, though, and now we’re stronger than ever. We live together in London and we support one another in our day-to-day lives. For example, when Niomi graduated, having completed her law degree, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She was in a position that so many people find themselves in when they graduate. She had spent so much money on her education but she became uncertain, thinking, What am I doing with my life? Have I chosen the wrong thing? Will I even enjoy a career in law?

  At that stage in our relationship, YouTube was starting to become a big thing for me. I was twenty-one-ish, and so was Niomi, and I knew she was into fashion, so I suggested she write a blog.

  Celebrating Niomi graduating from university in Bristol

  “Who’s going to read it?” she said. “Trust me, you’d be surprised. You’re into food and fashion. You’re fashionable. You have your passions and your interests. Talk about that!”

  She still wasn’t sure, and it was only once we’d been traveling to America together that she decided to go for it. Niomi’s a very good writer, so when she was working in a shoe store while she figured out what she wanted to do for a career, she got her blog off the ground.

  I guess it was only natural that she would end up on YouTube. Niomi appeared in my vlogs every now and then. People were making really nice comments, like, “Oh she’s so sweet, she should start her own channel!” In the end Niomi set up her own thing. The fans of her blog followed her over to YouTube and it’s been such a success that her channel is now a full-time job for her.

  Niomi and me on vacation at Disney in Florida

  We’re extremely lucky that, because of our jobs, we get to spend lots of time together. We can even go traveling together, to places such as LA. Our lives work. Sure, we bicker about the housework and things like that, but we don’t argue on the big issues. We’ve found a great balance in our relationship.

  But like I mentioned earlier, getting there hasn’t been easy. Love can be a nerve-racking business, especially when you’re trying to work out who you are and what you want to do with your life. Even liking someone can feel like a burden, especially if you’re unable to work through the feelings and hormones that are bombarding your brain. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there. Hopefully, my notes on this always-complicated subject can help to ease your stress.

  FINDING YOURSELF

  OK, before we get into the whole dating-game thing, I just want to deal with the issue of sexuality. Love is tough enough without adding sexual preferences into the mix, especially if you’re still figuring out whether to date boys or girls. It can be a scary time for some people. And you might even have to make some tough decisions along the way. But the one thing you must understand as you enter this new chapter in your life is that you will find happiness.

  It’s something I’m passionate about, even though I don’t have a coming-out story of my own. And I really don’t want to look like I’m trying to give advice on something I haven’t experienced myself. Instead, what I have are the recollections from my gay friends—stories from when they came out. All of them have told me that the people who loved them before, loved them exactly the same after they’d revealed their sexuality. They were scared about what their parents and friends would think at first. But what actually happened was that their life choices were accepted. Their families were supportive. They told them, “What were you scared about? You haven’t changed as a person. You’re still the same, it’s no different, and we still love you.” I know this isn’t true for everyone, so the internet can also be a great place to get advice and talk to people about this issue. But we’ll come to that in a second.

  Making the announcement can be hard, though. But the one thing you have to remember is that IT’S OK TO BE YOURSELF. You might not think that way when you’re growing up because, as a kid, everything you’re fed on TV and in the movies tells you that you have to meet your prince or princess in a straight romance. There are no gay relationships in any of the Disney films we all watch when we’re little. I guess I understand that life was different when those films were made, but even now a lot of romcoms are straight.

  When you make the decision, you’ll probably find that your announcement will be greeted in one of two ways, and YOU CAN NEVER PREDICT PEOPLE’S REACTIONS. I have to admit, from my friends’ experiences, I’ve only heard the positive stuff. Two close friends of mine came out recently and they were so pleased. Their lives changed. It was as if a whole weight, or pressure, had been lifted off their shoulders. They were happy and comfortable in themselves, and they seemed like new people once they had made their announcement.

  But I know that this isn’t always the case. Some people find it incredibly difficult to communicate with their parents on issues of sexuality. And it might be that, for some members of your family, being gay still seems weird, or wrong. They’re from a generation that doesn’t get it, in which case, there could be arguments, disputes, and heartbreak at home. If you have no one in your family to turn to, life can become very painful.

  Luckily there are people on hand to help you through these tricky times. Vlogs are a great comfort. My friends, the YouTuber Connor Franta, and the Australian actor Troye Sivan, both came out as gay on YouTube. Troye explained how he discovered his sexuality, and the difficulties he experienced in coming out—their videos have loads of reassuring advice in them. My YouTube friend Tyler Oakley supports The Trevor Project, which is an organization that focuses on preventing suicide in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) communities. If you go to www.thetrevorproject.org you’ll be able to read lots of info on the subject.

  There are also plenty of support groups online, such as Being Gay Is Okay—or www.bgiok.org.uk—which was designed to help people under the age of twenty-five. Their site has plenty of tips on how to come out to your friends and family, plus lots of useful, life-changing advice. But if you feel you really need to talk to some
one right away, you can contact the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender National Hotline, who provide confidential support for people throughout the United States. They can be reached at 1-888-843-4564 and www.glbthotline.org. They might not be able to calm your mom and dad down at first, but they will be able to help you.

  The Trevor Project

  thetrevorproject.org

  Being Gay Is Okay

  bgiok.org.uk

  Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender National Hotline

  glbthotline.org

  1-888-843-4564

  WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME?

  OK, first things first. You’re attracted to someone. This is good news. They’re hot, funny, smart, the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever laid your eyes on and, undoubtedly, without question, The One. The bad news is that now you’ve got to figure out what to do next. Unless you’re telepathic, this Object of Desire is probably unaware of your affections, so here are some pointers that should set you on your way to asking them out on the first of (hopefully) many dates.

  1 BE REALISTIC

  Sorry to be a Debbie Downer here, but you need to know your limits in the dating game. Be brutally honest with yourself. If a guy you fancy is usually drawn to the bookish indie-kid type and you’re a lithe, smiley beach volleyball hotshot, he might not be interested. Just saying.

  2 BUILD UP THE COURAGE

  Confidence is key. When I was at school it was a nightmare asking someone out. The smartphone technology wasn’t there for me to flirt with someone I liked, or deliver the question. I had to do it face-to-face, or on Messenger after school. Now you can ping someone with your phone and it’s sorted out in seconds.